2009.11.30

Comics Of The Weak: In The Eyes

Now that they've finished the portion of this six part imaginary story where Archie marries Veronica, it's time for him to settle down with Betty. As in the previous chapters...fuck it, why not call them "Chapters", the art consistently knocks one out with bizarre, Colorform style concoctions. Eyes, noses, mouths--it doesn't matter how big or small the faces are, just attach the shit anywhere, it's a game of pin-the-feature-on-the-pancake. It's impossible to single one out, there's tons of shit in here that doesn't even make Archie-sense, much less the regular kind. There's also an odd preachy quality to the whole thing, with multiple characters referencing how Archie has "chosen love" over money, which has the whoops! result of turning the previous arc--where Archie married Veronica--into one about Archie, The Gold-digging Scumbag, who chose "Ronnie" for purely financial reasons. It also clashes with Archie's decision here, where his attempt to assuage Veronica's hurt feelings comes wrapped up in an explanation that it isn't like he or Betty are ever going to make it out of their shitty little town or these shitty little lives. (Nice one, that. Not only does Archie condemn himself, but he seems to believe that Betty couldn't possibly have a future either.) On the factual aspect, it's not like the story allows for much disagreement--they'll marry in the shitty diner, with the honeymoon at the local fleabag hotel. But considering that the story is so clumsily scripted that it fails to make it clear whether Archie is only marrying Betty because Veronica is leaving town and therefore unavailable, god knows how reliable "the story" is supposed to be.

It's called Creepy, and that's what it is. It's also Predicatable As Fuck, which could ironically make it sell more copies, because the type of people who look at something called "Creepy" and say "not for me" are quite likely to take a chance on something called "You'll See The End Coming" or "You Ever Read Tales From The Crypt? This Is A Lot Like That". The most unsettling section of this anthology is the short part at the end where a writer/artist team vomit out one panel renditions of old school torture methods (each far worse than what one might see in a Saw movie), all of which are designed to eventually kill somebody after horribly disfiguring them and causing unimaginable pain. That's sort of the trick of it, actually--by themselves, the panels are just information delivery, they're completely predicated on the reader imagining seeing these fucking things in real-world action, possibly to themselves or their coworkers. Pleasant strokes for greasy folks, one imagines.

The first issue of this series consisted of an entertaining mash-up of boot-camp war movie tropes--Full Metal, Patton, etc--but it left off without a clear sense that it had anything to offer beyond meta-referentials. And while issue 2 isn't without in-jokes, they're actually in the service of a story. In all, it's a surprising combo-comic, as much in love with war movies and crash mythology courses as it is with Marvel's obsessive publication of super-powered Black Ops stories. Ares has spent the better part of five years at the front n' center of various Avengers books, with little to explain his participation beyond "lack of Thor", all of which makes Gillen's ubergod of violent action flicks take on the character one more reason why it's not such a bad thing for Marvel to publish all these three issue mini's.

This consists of a team-up between The Guardian (a Superman-related character) and Robin (of Batman fame), the story is set in Metropolis (where Superman lives), the villains are a team-up between Mr. Freeze (he's visiting from Batman's hometown) and The Parasite (he usually fights Superman). Basically, it's your Typical DC Comic Book Team-Up Version # 3, and it reads like that. Whatever goofy shit it is that happens to Ramon Bachs' art when he does Azrael doesn't show up here, because instead of looking like weird alt-mash-up Azrael, this just looks like warmed-over Nightwing.

It's shit like these that just make the whole try-to-get-into-it game no goddamn fun, because what can you say about a comic book character who keeps a framed picture of his fucking dog in his briefcase? Even if it's because he's bringing it to his first day at the job so that he can forever more be the dude who has a framed hero shot of his space dog on his desk at work, it's still--who wants to read that? How far removed is showcasing that piece of information from coming up with a scene where Clark Kent pisses on the side of his pants on purpose, so that his co-workers will always and forever assume that the dude who looks like Superman can't be Superman, because Superman would never piss down the side of his pants. "Eeet!" Really? "Eeet?" Hell, if he's going the dog on the fucking desk/let the elevator man screw me over route, why not start prank calling his female neighbors, Philip Seymour Hoffman style?

(And since when does the office slut joke about her sluttiness openly? If you've ever worked with an office slut, you know as well as Geoff Johns does that the office slut never thinks she's a slut. She's always got some wonked out I'm Just Being Me explanation for why she keeps blowing the interns.)

But that's not what really matters here, what matters is whether the old song works, whether the original narrative thread buried within this dross of "updates" can still provide enough of a spine to keep the thing from collapsing in a pile of slime on the floor. In a way, it does--after all, Superman appearing for the first time is a story that just works, and no amount of Reeve worship and what-a-glorious-ass-you-have Lois drawings can completely obscure that, although it's estimable how hard Frank tries. (If drawing Superman as an 80's actor was ever going to work, it was going to be when Superman's age caught up with said actor.) And while there's certainly some merit in questioning the necessity of this particular project, those aren't questions that have much of a lifespan--super-hero comics are supposed to repeat themselves, ideally because their readers would be cycling through, aging and moving on. (To what, god knows, it's not only comics that are proselytize the remake and the remaster as primary function, but then again, this is "ideals", and the actual audience for this has, of course, Read It Before.) What Johns Wrought isn't holy text, but it's pointed how sensible the whole thing is--still predictable, but in a way that allows for some contemporary improvisation. (Superman questions the tightness of the outfit, he's angsty and full of self-doubt--Johns has his obsessions, and one could at least be thankful that the weird dad shit is kept to a slow boil.) And while none of that make up a thing that would appeal to anyone who it wasn't already going to appeal to in the first place, and it's certainly undeserving of anything more than "it's not horrible" praise, it does function in the way that it's supposed to. Which is more than one can say for Metamorpho Year One, if that counts.

This comic doesn't tie into an event or Dark Reign, there's no monkeys, and it's self-contained. Those are either pluses or minuses, depending on what side of the bed one wakes up on. It does prominently features precocious children in key roles, because comic books have two kinds of kids, precocious wiseasses and victims. The art isn't as wet as previous issues, but it still has a few problem panels, most notably a page where the male version of precocious Fantastic Kid is depicted with the face of an elderly woman. All told, it's an issue of Fantastic Four, and while it's not awful or anything, it's the Fantastic Four. If it were possible for super-hero comics to reach "run its course", it would be this one. Because this one isn't even bad, and it's still about 20 years away from being any good.

The tagline on the cover is "Love & Dismemberment", but it's only half-true--there's no making out to be found here. There is a bit of dismemberment, with Red Arrow getting his arm forcibly removed by somebody, maybe a good guy, who knows. In the place of "love" is one of the oddest pieces of back-and-forth this particular comic has had so far, and considering this is the same comic that built an entire conversational dialectic around people screaming the word "justice", you know it's pretty fucking special. Besides that, there's multiple cases of confusion paneling, with characters depicted at greater or lesser distances form one another over and over again--imagine having an argument with somebody while both of you run to opposite corners of the room mid-sentence, that's the sort of thing that happens here.

There's a really nice article in the back of this issue about Australian films, which is great, because The Proposition and Chopper are both really fucking great movies--hell, Proposition has pretty much achieved full-on Predator/Jaws status, in the sense that it's the type of movie that always wins when the choice is "get to work on time" or "finish watching Guy Pearce let flies crawl across his eyeball without blinking." The comic is pretty nice too, although Brubaker's backpage mention that the issue was a bit rushed sort of goes without saying, considering the oddness of some of the faces drawn here. It's Criminal, and Criminal is always satisfying, but if it turns out that this is another one of those stories about kids killing their molesters, that's going to be really obnoxious. It'll probably still be well-told, but--egh. If a story has made it to all the way down to the level of Rescue Me subplot, that should make it anathema for at least fifty years.

Justice League of America # 39Written by James RobinsonArt by Mark BagleyPublished by DC Comics

Vibe probably wasn't initially created to be a ridiculous racial stereotype--a breakdancing, jive-talking Latino who wore gigantic parachute pants--but that's what he was, and that's why you don't really see him much anymore. Bringing him back as a Black Lantern doesn't mean that any of that has to be confronted, it just means that whoever does it has to smooth the edges off, and it's not hard to see what's missing. (He doesn't say "Chu" in every other sentence, for one. Also, tight pants.) What's hilarious is that, after you peel off all that shit, there's not a whole lot left to deal with from a "who is this character" POV, which is why Vibe is the only Black Lantern in this issue of JLA who gets three pages of backstory despite him being only one of four that show up in this issue. The others--Steel, Zatara & Dr. Light--hell, you know who they are, or you can figure it out. But Vibe?

Here's a thought experiment for you: this comic book has absolutely no metaphorical content whatsoever. It can't be read as being about anything (beyond what the plot says) without straight-up lying about its contents. It's not about power and responsibility, or what it means to be a hero, or fish out of water, or don't judge a book by its cover, or self-sacrifice for the good of the combine, or the difference between justice and forgiveness, self-empowerment wish-fulfilment, etc, so on, any of those various things that comics are almost always about, except when their about how fucking wacky it is to be gay/black/trans-gender/straight/Christian/Muslim/atheist/cartoonist/barista Americana, which is what the rest of them are about. Blackest Night isn't about any of those things. It's sort of about team-work, and there's some weird meta-connections to it, in that it's a zombie horror movie being written by somebody who doesn't seem to have done anything but read DC comic books, much less watch a horror movie. (They're violent? Got it, i'll get back to reading Zero Hour.) Otherwise? It's Blackest Night. It's about Blackest Night.

Now that it's reached it's half-way point, it's been made clear that, yes, a big part of the story will hinge on all the various Lantern characters teaming up together in the biggest "fuck all ya'll Superman/Batman fans" twist in DC history, and while that's only offensive if you're taking these things too seriously, that doesn't make it any less weird, because...a big event comic is using the writer's favorite characters as a hinge with which to swing the door o' plot on? All so that everybody can see how the purest and most wonderful thing in the universe is the awesomeness of White over Black? But yeah, if you're going to go down that road, then you're going to be talking about racial connotations, which--nah, it's obvious that this doesn't have anything like that, because this thing doesn't have any connotations at all. It's about exactly what it says it's about, which is that a whole bunch of various colored and various emotion themed magic ring wielding teams are going to team up and combine the colors of their various wishing rings to construct another, more powerful and more pure color so that they can stop the physical embodiment of death, which is a bipedal humanoid character who speaks English that used to fight Captain Atom. The best part of the entire thing so far was in an issue of Green Lantern Corps, when a big black thing tried to steal Queen Coleman from the Smurf planet, but then he was stopped by a Mexican suicide bomber.

And honestly? You can pretty much add exclamation points to those last two sentences right there, and you can add the word "Awesome!", and you'll have produced a rough approximation of every positive review that this piece of shit is ever going to get. That's how easy it is to write positive comic book reviews. Make a fucking note.

See, that's why I'm wary of Geoff Johns' writing. He's not so much a writer as he is an entertainer, and his works read much more like "hey how cool would it be if this happened guys??" rather than some deeper and more meaningful story. Of course, that can be said for a lot of "big name" writers, such as Mark Millar, but Johns has made a habit lately of making sure he holds our hand as we walk through his precious comics so that absolutely no one will miss the oh so clever story beats that he's so proud of. I'm pretty sure the very idea of meta-text would give him an aneurysm.

On the positive review thing - I was thinking about that. How does one write a positive review of a guilty pleasure book? I just read Jeph Loeb's Hulk run this weekend and while they're pretty awful, I had a lot of fun reading them, so I was thinking - how could I write a positive review of a book like this? I'm pretty sure I could pull it off by talking about what the book does well - in this case, lots of splash pages to show off the artist's cool pictures of dudes punching each other - and how it only works depending on what you're looking for going into the story. Because books like Hulk or Blackest Night or whatever aren't Acme Novelty Library r Ganges - they're not meant to challenge the form and structure of comics or show off design chops - they only exist to be fun for people who enjoy the pleasures they're offering.

I think Caleb Mozzocco has nailed the "positive review of a guilty pleasure" thing pretty well when he talks about Johns' Green Lantern, describing it as perpetually teetering on the edge of "stupid" and "awesomely stupid". I think that works perfectly for that sort of thing, probably including stuff like Loeb's Hulk, or, I dunno, the current Franken-Punisher storyline? Some of Millar's stuff might fit that mold, but I usually give him a little more credit than that. Not too much though; Kick-Ass and Old Man Logan fit right in that guilty pleasure area, and something like 1985 tips over into "just stupid".

I agree with Chad that positive reviews can be more difficult to write, but also disagree with the whole idea of the "guilty pleasure." Kick-Ass and Old Man Logan aren't trying to do the same things as Ganges or another artcomic, but then again, neither are all-ages comics or humor comics or porn comics. If they're done well, where's the guilt? The Ramones' goals weren't the same as Radiohead's. Jim Thompson wasn't trying to be Pynchon. At the same time, I'm sure most highbrow artists have some lowbrow stuff they not only like but which influenced them. How old do people have to be, or how much therapy do they need, before they can just say they like something with no shame?

Chris, I think I see where you're going, but I don't think I agree. Lowbrow stuff can be done well - I think most critics would agree a Ramones album is better composed than a Dru Hill album, but how does something like a Brittney Spears album or a Christina Aguillera album fall into that spectrum?

Matt, you might be right on that "awesomely stupid" vs "just stupid" classification. Loeb's Hulk is *incredibly* stupid, but I would put it into the "awesomely stupid" category because I like cartoony pictures of superhero fights. On the other hand, Loeb's Ultimates was "just stupid" because the poor story got in the way of enjoying the pretty pictures. (BTW - Thanks for the Millar nod! Even if I am the only guy in the world who thinks his stuff is "awesomely stupid.")

I haven't read any of Blackest Night (I bought the key books, no spinoffs, but probably won't read for months at best) but my question is: why is it soooo popular. It's (inc spin-offs) consistently taking all the top spots at my lcs, plus I often read/see people saying things like "i can't help it, I've decided to become a bn junkie -- I'm signing up for it all, spinoffs, 1-shots, ahhhh!"

So, wassup w/that? It seems to be pretty sucky, but what itch is it scratching? is it simply zombie-superheroes as a zeitgeist thing?

Y'know you're pretty much obligated to write all positive reviews next time.

And I honestly, and critically, like Jeff Loeb's stuff a lot, 90 % of the time. He figures out his artist's strengths perfectly - (Really. Look at the "quiet" ink-washed Jim Lee stuff in Hush - ) and gives them cool stuff to draw.

He's trying to put together a series of cool visuals and he (virtually always) succeeds in putting together a series of cool visuals. (It bothers me how many people - And by "people" I mean "English Majors" simply don't understand this.)

Apropos of nothing, I enjoy that each of your reviews with the current year as if it will live on through the aeons, perhaps to be discovered by a distant future civilization who will ponder what a "Snapper Carr" is. Presuming these future-people still use the Gregorian calendar, they will know that Tucker Stone wrote this insightful but horribly antiquated snippet in the year of our Lord 2009 AD and DEFINITELY NOT 2008.

@MarkAndrew: Being totally pedantic here, but is JEPH not JEFF. If you plan on going around defending his work. Just some advice from a former English Major who finds all of Loeb's recent Marvel work stupid and incoherant, regardless of what artist got shackled to him for the book...

On the other hand his "Batman/Spirit" one-shot with Darwyn Cooke surprises me every time I read it by how cool and fun it is...

Oh god, that Batman/Spirit book. I thought that thing was terrible, despite some nice art. That thing is Loeb to a T though: just cram a bunch of characters in, have them do some "cool" stuff, try to give the artist some opportunities for nice visuals, screw any plot coherence whatsoever. It was just relentlessly stupid, to the point that even Cooke's awesomeness couldn't save it.

And that fits pretty much everything Loeb has done lately (if not ever; I don't really want to go back and read the older stuff to find out), and why even if he does put together some cool visuals (or rather, allow his artists to do so), his comics suck. That's what the English majors are complaining about, I imagine: plots that don't make sense, characters that act inconsistently, and just plain aggressive stupidity. Cool visuals are nice, but if that's all you need, why not just put together a poster book or something?

As for the "guilty pleasure" question, I do realize that there's a point where you should be able to enjoy something without feeling like you have to apologize for it, but this is something else, I think. There's "lowbrow", and there's just "bad". I dunno, comics are weird that way, for some reason they inspire strong emotions, maybe because they're still seen as childish. I can give a counter-example, in that I love martial arts movies, and am willing to overlook dumb plots, bad acting, and even some atrocious dubbing if the action is good enough. Do I have to ask for more from comics? For some reason, I guess I do. I actually barely buy any superhero comics, so my perspective is that of somebody who just wants to read some good ones, which are few and far between. I dunno, it's something to think about, I guess.

Even if I am the only guy in the world who thinks his stuff is "awesomely stupid."

Oh no no. There are sometimes variations, and I think his high-concepts are actually quite clever on occasion, but typically executed on a range of stupid to aggressively stupid to fully-retarded. I love Mark Millar.

Matt: a bad Marvel or DC comic is usually about fifty times worse than a bad just-about-anything-else, though, isn't it?

I wish we could stop talking about this whole "guilty pleasures" thing -- you can only try to level the playing field so much, before you get to a point where if you didn't get any pleasure out of some piece-of-shit book, then you have to get into some pissing-match over whether your aesthetic criteria are any good, is there any objective difference between Bach and Weezer or some goddamn thing like that. Which is bullshit: if the guy who thinks Comic X is moronic has to back it up, so does the guy who thinks Comic X is awesome. They both have to expose their tastes to public ridicule.

But, really...when we're arguing over whether Budweiser tastes better out of a bottle than out of a can, we ought to be able to leave the Chateau Latour out of it.

No one is beholden to some sort of taste tribunal, despite what the internet would have us all believe. Whatever you're into, that's what you're into, and if some small person makes a federal case out of it, fuck 'em.

However, that really doesn't come into play when we're talking criticism. "I just like it!" isn't a defense, or an argument. Real criticism involves cogent points and being critical.

Additionally, there's a substantial difference between comments like "This is bad because it is of this worthless genre/medium/style" and "This is a bad example of genre/medium/style" One is useless snobbery, the other is legitimate criticism.

Jeph Loeb used to write bad movies - the guy wrote Commando - so that makes sense. I think it's a good thing, that movie makes me want to punch people in the throat and I pay stacks of money for a comic that made care a third as much as that movie did.

Well, sometimes. I can't think of a worse plotter working in the mainstream. It's a series of interesting and or cool visuals.

I'm gonna get maimed for this, but in a lotta ways it's the same thing as Finnegan's Wake being about the beauty of the language used.

"characters that act inconsistently,"

I've read 90% of Loeb's output, and I don't see it. His characters might act inconsistently with what other writers are doing, but I've read enough superhero comics that I just accept it.

I mean, I've sat down and read Captain America. WHole thing, every issue. And there's at least 6-7 different characters there. And I like most of 'em fine. Stan Lee's Man Out of Time isn't Englehart's troubled liberal isn't Kirby's social mythology isn't Gruenwald's pulp adventurer, but they're all pretty cool in their own way.

"and just plain aggressive stupidity."

I don't see it. I think he enjoys his job more than most of his contemperaries - Is that what you're getting at?

"Cool visuals are nice, but if that's all you need, why not just put together a poster book or something?"

'Cause you don't get the sense of motion, the sense of interlocking panel design, and, even in the abstract, there's a different tool-set to using comics than still, static images.

Jephffoffph Loeb books do, s'far as I can tell, exactly what the author wants them to do. If taken as one chapter of the Hulk story by people who REALLY CARE about what happens to the Hulk- Yeah, I can see why it's bad.

But if it's read as a series of cool visuals created by a highly visual writer - In other words approach the works on it's own merits - Than I think his stuff almost always works.

@plok

"Matt: a bad Marvel or DC comic is usually about fifty times worse than a bad just-about-anything-else, though, isn't it?"

I dunno. The worst Marvel and DC comics at least have to pretend to try to entertain. It's not crappy rhyming poetry about how your girlfriend left you over photo-shopped panels from Eightball. (I own this comic. It is worse than any Marvel or DC comic I've ever read.)

"The worst Marvel and DC comics at least have to pretend to try to entertain."

I don't know, man...you're sure setting the bar pretty low for "at least"-ing. And basically I'm just saying that the standards Big Two books have to meet to be allowed out the door are way low, so Matt shouldn't beat himself up for cutting lousy kung fu movies more slack than lousy JLA stories; not when the worst Big Two comics I've ever read are things that were worse by far than any book, TV show, movie, play, or puppet show I've ever seen.

That said, I would LOVE to witness the awesome insanity of the comic that is worse than Force Works! Get out that scanner and get down to business, Mark!

I don't see it. I think he enjoys his job more than most of his contemperaries - Is that what you're getting at?"

If enjoying his job means seeing how much nonsensical idiocy he can get away with, then sure. I really can't tell how much he enjoys what he does, but unless it's a snickering, purposeful, "look what I managed to get Marvel to publish", I would hope he doesn't get too much out of it. The guy's like a junior high student drawing pictures of his teacher getting shot or something; I suppose he might like it, but that doesn't make it good, and it really shouldn't be enjoyed by anybody else.

I think Caleb Mozzocco has defined this better than I ever could, with his looks at Ultimates 3 or some of the Hulk stuff, but I think "aggressive stupidity" is about the best way to describe what he does. Spending a full-page splash on Sabretooth yelling "Suck it!", or having Hulk turn into Wendihulk for no reason other than because it might be a neat (but yes, still stupid) thing for the artist to draw are good examples. Of course, I didn't actually read those books, but I did read some issues of Ultimatum, and that thing was full of moronic nonsense, like Magneto getting his arm cut off by a metal sword, or the Thing squishing Dr. Doom's head, or tons and tons of other examples of pointless violence on every page. And that wasn't even good art, just ugly, ugly David Finch grossness. It's just bad, and having it strung together in some semblance of storytelling in hopes that it might look nice doesn't redeem it.

As for inconsistent characters, that's probably giving Loeb too much credit, since it presumes that characters would be established well enough to act differently than they had previously. Loeb just treats them like cardboard cutouts or action figures, smashing them together like a ten year old, then maybe tearing them apart, melting them with a lighter, or blowing them up with firecrackers, because that's so kewl. That's the level of storytelling we're dealing with here, and having it drawn by Leonardo Fucking Da Vinci wouldn't make it any more readable.